There are literally millions of chess books and tutorials that are available to us these days and all chess learners study from this same pool of material.

However, only a very small group of players (less than 5%) will experience any significant progress. The majority of players (95%) will unfortunately experience only slight advancement or, worse, no progress at all.

How to deal with such a sad situation? There are two typical approaches:

1. The players belonging to the first group are a little confused and they ask themselves the question (or send the question to me ), “Why am I not progressing despite all of my desire and efforts?“ If you are in this group, please accept my congratulations – you have very good chances for improvement!

2. The second group of players prefers to believe in what they want to believe. They think that they are “experienced,” “advanced,” “experts” or that they “know all the chess basics already,” etc. However, there is a well-known refutation proverb, “If you are so smart, then why are you so poor?” In regards to chess, this proverb basically translates to: “If you know so many things about chess, then why your rating is so low?”